


The Three Twigs of Delphine Cormier

by immunologie



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Drama, F/F, Romance, Science, Science Girlfriends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2014-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 10:12:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immunologie/pseuds/immunologie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is the smallest things that save us; colors, lines, a glass of wine, twigs.</p>
<p>Season 1 from Delphine's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Hypothesis

**Author's Note:**

> _On indefinite hiatus_

HYPOTHESIS:

_It is the smallest things that save us; colors, lines, a glass of wine, twigs._

——

METHODOLOGY:

I.

The branches stared back at her through the lens, little streaks of red lying amongst the neon green fluorescence. The story of the antibody that did not recognize its own self and called it alien. The terminal ‘Y’ ends like twigs, the variable parts that latched on and led to the signal to destroy, to kill. She wished she could break them all off. Maybe it would’ve saved a life.

A ringtone. She looked down at the lit screen beside the microscope.

_A. Leekie._

A vision of cold hands against her back, on her neck.

Maybe it would’ve saved two lives.

She swallowed the bitter saliva and picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“How’s the research?”

She sighed and decided to go with it. “No hello?”  
A chuckle with no meaning, a voice that tried. “You know I like you for your brain, not your cheekiness.”  
“Was that supposed to be a compliment?”

The softness disappeared within the pause. “We need results, Delphine. And fast.”

“I’ve already produced so much,” she retorted. She gripped the edge of the microscope, worn from use. She wanted to be outside. She missed the air on long days in the lab. “You wouldn’t be where you are with your successful implants without my work! The Dyad Institute wouldn’t—“

“And your mother would be dead right now without that kidney.” The phone felt like ice against her ear.

“They know she needs another one soon,” he continued.

There was a howling that transfixed her before she realized she needed to remember how to breathe. He heard the gulp of air.

“Remember how you loved science? That’s what made you one of the best I’ve worked with. You love doing this.” But his voice was not the same voice of the man she once knew.

“You know it’s not about science anymore,” she whispered. “What happened to you, Aldous?”  
“Look. If not for science, then do it for your mother.”  
“Remember how I used to trust you?”

Silence. Black.

“Go get some air, Delphine. Plant a tree - whatever makes you feel better. Then get back to work.” A click.

She glanced at the screen.  _Call ended._

Later, when she was walking through the autumn leaves she would question their reason for growing when their fates would be sealed under the crunch of her boots. But then she would take it all back the second she walked into the university greenhouse, a recent discovery she’d actually been proud of upon being moved to Minnesota to continue her research.

It was 10,000 square feet of life with over 1,200 species of plants. 10,000 square feet of beauty. And she did not reserve that word for the plants alone.

There she was again. Thick, black eyeglasses, intricate dreadlocks, and a vintage scarf.

She chuckled. The girl was nerdy and quirky all at once, solidified by her speech today on the role of urban greenery. In front of the small tour gathered by a display of perennials, she could see the girl twirling her hands in rhythm with her words, wrists dangling with eccentric jewelry, exuding a sense of energy and passion.

Delphine found her animated presence invigorating and, well, it was beautiful. It was one of the reasons she found herself frequenting the greenhouse, though she never had the courage to talk to her and would often just stand behind another display on the other side of the room to watch, and listen.

What it would be to feel free and alive again. She wanted to be friends with this girl, with anyone actually. But was she allowed to? Aldous had told her to stay low.

It had been strange. Her facilities in Paris were more than enough to work with. This new university was better known for it’s environmental/ecology programs, and things like the agricultural sciences, or plant and animal sciences.

She felt a change in projects on the rise, perhaps an inside on their highly impressive and highly secretive cloning experiments that only the higher echelons of Dyad were privy to, and that Aldous had alluded to her on several occasions. She knew they had been successful in cloning  _people_. Most of it was too aggressive for her. Science was supposed to understand, to heal, to help - but it was already too late to say no by the time she’d discovered the other side. She had already sold her brain for a kidney.

And she would continue to do so because she cared too much. She cared about her mother and she cared about him. She wondered if he ever loved her more than science, even if just for a moment, and if she could still save him.

But for now, she would wait. Aldous would be joining her in a few days. Hopefully she would know more then.

You see, she  _wanted_  to be in on the cloning program, not for the people, but to be involved in the likes of creating organs from stem cells. New kidneys for her mother. She just hoped that in the quest to create the living artificial, she wouldn’t lose her own soul too.

She knew she was walking into the dark. That’s why, at least here, surrounded by energy and beauty, she could close her eyes, and breathe, and pretend with the remains of her broken heart that she, too, was still living.

She opened them and looked out.

The girl with the glasses was gone, the afternoon light left to caress the leaves.

It was then that she decided to write her name at the main desk on the paper for volunteers.


	2. Twigs

II.

It had been two days and the girl with the glasses had not returned to the greenhouse. And it had been two days since Delphine started learning about how to prune plants from a professor of horticulture who devoted her free time directing the volunteer force, and who she decided to call Madame Lentille, just for the fact that the stout middle-aged woman seemed charmed by her accent.

“Here here, my dear,” the woman would say to her when she’d accidentally cut a far greater angle than was appropriate. Madame would then take over the shears and show her a 45 degree angle cut. 

It was ironic that the moment she decided to invest in something personal, something closer to a “home” in this new place, it decided to run away from her. So much so that she could not concentrate on cutting a simple angle when she had the ability to manipulate microscopic antibodies in her sleep.

“It’s like half of a ‘Y’, Delphine. When you cut the little twigs,” Madame continued that day, showing her once more where she went wrong.

“Oui, madame.” She picked up her shears and stared at the withering branches.

“Now what do you want to do with this one?”

“I want to make it beautiful again,” she replied.

“You know, sometimes it is better not to prune than to do it incorrectly. The plants can weaken and deform. But with the proper techniques, one can enhance the beauty of any shrub. We prune to train the plant, so we can maintain its health and improve the quality of its flowers, and yes, ultimately, become beautiful.”

She nodded silently in response, the shears feeling heavier in her hand.

Madame spoke. “What’s wrong, my dear?”

She looked up and softly questioned, “What if it’s already too late?”

The woman placed a hand on her hip and smirked. “Then we hope for plant heaven’s good graces to fall on it.”

She had never felt more homesick for a place that didn’t exist.

And just when she had put on her coat and decided to take her name off the paper on the main desk, she heard a familiar voice. Turning around she saw red.

It was the girl with the glasses, in a red coat, against the light green of the desk. It was like Christmas almost; a wintery warmth. Delphine froze and pretended to scroll through her phone.

“Hi! Yeah, sorry, I’ve just been… busy with research, y’know?” the girl sputtered to the attendant.

“Already? The semester just started!”

“Yeah, well.” A laugh. “Sign me up for Horticulture Night?”

The girl had a lovely voice. It was clear and full of color.

Delphine spent the rest of the evening wondering if heaven consisted of the same colors. Her name remained on the volunteer list at the greenhouse.

…

“Where are you going?” he stirred.

She slid off the arm and the sheets, longing for an escape from the cold. “I volunteered to help at the greenhouse this morning.” Sweater. Pants. Where were her boots?

“I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t draw attention to yourself.”

She turned around to find him in his robe, holding out a pair of boots. She took them and scurried into the living room.

“Well you also told me to plant a tree, so.” She sat on the sofa and pulled on a sock before checking to see his reaction.

He calmly lifted his brows. “Did it make you feel better?”

She pulled on her other sock. It was black with red dots. She remembered the red of the girl’s coat. Smiling softly, she replied, “Yes.”

“Well then, I take it you’re ready for this.”

She looked up to find him pulling a folder out from the bookcase. He strode over and handed her the files.

“What is this?”

“Your new assignment. The reason why we brought you here.”

Could this be? She carefully opened the cover.

It was.

_Dyad Institute Restricted Intellectual Material._

“The cloning experiment I’ve told you about,” he continued. “Welcome to the project.”

She fluttered her eyes. This could be her chance. “What would I be doing?”

“You’ll be in the field. Open it. It’ll explain your role.”

A vision of dreadlocks. She blinked in rapid succession, wondering if her eyesight had gone mad, but it wasn’t a hallucination.

The girl with the glasses was staring back at her from the papers on her lap. For a moment, she couldn’t speak as numerous projections raced through her head. Her hand darted to cover the slight gape of her mouth.

_Hi! Yeah, sorry, I’ve just been… busy with research, y’know?_

“How— why is this girl here? Is she one of the scientists on the case?” she blurted.

“She is one of a few,” he recited, as if in oration. He reached down to turn the page. She could swear her heart stopped as her eyes read along with his words.

“Cosima Niehaus. Tag number 324B21. One of our subjects. A product of human cloning born through in vitro fertilization, almost three decades in the making. The future of Neolution.”

 _Clone. 324B21. Neolution. Clone. One of a few. Artificial. 324B21_ … Her thoughts whirled with the momentum of two worlds colliding, crashing into pieces, now as broken as her own reality. Her wonderful, unique, breath of fresh air. It couldn’t be.

She hurriedly questioned those days in the greenhouse, wondering if the girl had come about like a mirage in the parched desert of her heart. If she had just been that. A mirage.

“She is a PhD student here at the University of Minnesota. And you will be her monitor. You will study her and report back with her status.”

She shook her head, still in disbelief. “How would I go about—”

He flipped to the back, revealing a university transcript in French, an enrollment schedule for the semester, and a University of Minnesota student ID card with her face. _Delphine Beraud._

“To keep appearances,” he grinned.

“This is mad,” she whispered.

“Is there a problem?”

“What if I say no?”

“Then you go back to your old research and we’ll find someone else to monitor the girl.”

“What could happen to her?”

He shrugged. “We’re studying them in order to maintain their health and stability.”

Suddenly, she didn’t want to know if they would destroy a branch if it had withered. She didn’t want anyone else to monitor the girl. It had to be her. If anything, to keep her safe.

Her mind stilled and she was finally able to focus on the things that she did know.

Her name was Cosima and she liked plants.


	3. Cosima

III.

She wasn’t prepared for this. How to speak to someone you’ve longed to speak to in what seemed like an eternity of silence? Who would have ever wanted to do such a thing.

And she. Cos—  _Her_. Well— she spoke infinitely better english than Delphine could hope to. It was but a second language. She felt like regressing completely into French.

She exhaled quickly and shook her hair. It would be a disaster. The girl didn’t speak French according to her profile. And what if the girl thought she was plain and boring? What if she didn’t want to be friends?

She closed the folder and slipped it between the shadows of her notebooks, wondering what she had gotten herself into. She stared at the door to the laboratory, then the hands on her watch. Had it really been five minutes? This was mad.

Maybe she should just wait for a lecture opportunity to sit beside her. Maybe next time. Maybe— maybe she  _wanted_  to see her. It had been three days, and almost 24 hours, and… she shuddered as the seconds hand passed 20. And 21 seconds. _324B21_. Things she couldn’t get out of her mind, and now her body was moving to the same rhythm.

She pushed through the door, unrehearsed. The girl was deep in concentration, eyes attached to the lens of her microscope. An experiment studying itself.

It made her incredibly sad and fascinated all at the same time that she slowly sank into a chair at the counter across to quietly watch. After a few moments she realized she had been staring. It was the first time she’d seen the girl without her glasses. They were propped on her head, the mystery of her eyes and what they were able to see exposed over the deep blue ocean between their lab-counter-waves to the questioning shores of Delphine’s own. Inviting.

Blue gloved hands creating rifts in the air as she conversed with another student, winds that tugged at Delphine’s sails. Brown locks falling onto the blankets of her lab coat, alive. A pair of scissors. She had pruned a twig of hair.

Delphine panicked. To treat her as a person or as a subject, and can you make a compromise with both? She called him.

A blur of français.

_Aldous, I can’t. She’s a person._   
_Yes, you can. This is what you wanted. This is for us._

Us. What did that even mean anymore?

_How’s my mother?_   
_They need your report first._   
_I want to know now._   
_… She’s in danger, Delphine._   
_No._   
_We’ll talk later._   
_No!_   
_Good. Use this energy to make a scene. Get her attention._   
_You’re a bastard._   
_Goodbye, Delphine._

But somehow, through all of her stumbling, the girl had managed to look at her. She couldn’t even appreciate the moment because she knew she was a fool in every sense of the word, drowning in her own mess, that when every molecule of that girl’s attention had focused on her, the only thing she could afford was “I’m sorry”.

_I’m sorry for what I am about to do to you._

And when she got up, she tried to make herself look so pitiful and abhorring so as to say  _please don’t pick it up, don’t come after me_.

But this girl.

She didn’t care.

When Delphine cared so much, she did not care one bit.

She did not care about the unspoken code of privacy on another’s transcript record, or inquiring about a woman’s tears that seeped through the wall she had tried to build in the span of seconds, or the secrets of a person’s soul.

She was curious and she was brave without knowing it and she was so real that Delphine believed in systems and structure and the world all over again, that when she treaded out even further to ask about her being French, speaking in her American manner - and could grades kill? - that Delphine couldn’t help but laugh in surprise - and what was the color of laughter?

The girl with the glasses did not care too much, but she did where it counted the most. And it was surreal to hear their voices mixed in the conversation of light’s spectrum that when the girl asked about a breakup, she thought of the oceans between their blue counters and how she had left abruptly even though what she wanted was to be closer.

 _Cosima_.

In her name was the entire universe, and it was like she was flying through it, and it was enchanting.

She didn’t know what to make of such magic. All she knew was Immunology, and being immune to such charms.

So when Aldous asked her later that evening to describe her subject, she wanted to say that Cosima Niehaus wasn’t like any girl she’d ever seen before.

That Cosima was like the first time she had walked through the woods by Versailles with her mother. She was five. It was late afternoon and the shadows of the trees frightened her until her mother asked her why she walked looking down. She’d said that they seemed like dark green walls, like the ones in Alice’s garden when she got lost while following the White Rabbit and fell down a black hole. Then her mother told her that there was no need to be afraid, because the trees will always guide you back home.

She taught her how to look up and search for the signs; that trees are never symmetrical, and heavier on the side that gets more sun - usually the southern part of the sky in northern countries like France. That the branches grow towards the sun, and so the southern side branches grow more horizontally than the vertical northern branches that seek the light from their shade.

Delphine had frowned when she cautiously moved her gaze up a massive oak and, after pleading with it in one attitude for a lengthy while, it refused to discuss its secrets. Her mother smiled and took her hand. They had circled the tree and she realized that it told her different things from different angles, and it was like discovering the pleasant surprises of a pint of ice cream in the fridge after a hot summer day, crumpled euros upon sticking your hands in pockets you haven’t worn in a while, a puppy with a ribbon around it in the living room after coming home from school and begging your parents for one for years, your family together at last on Christmas morning, and knowing the person you find wonderful finds you absolutely wonderful back.

It was Cosima beginning to reveal her secrets to her. Like when her mother had pointed out the spider webs in the shelters of the tree branches, away from the wind, which usually blew from the south, and she had learned another way to visualize her compass. How nature was all connected! It had given her her first taste of true freedom - the freedom to go anywhere she liked because she could always find her way home. To keep her head up to the wonder and beauty of it all.

That’s how Cosima Niehaus looked to her.

But she realized she couldn’t say all of that. He would think her deranged.

Come to think of it, she had never known if he had thought much of her. The real her.

That it wasn’t just about how to get from North to South, that it was about how everything was connected, like the hydrogen bonds of DNA base pairs. And how once you’ve found the secret to unraveling them, you could transcribe them and create proteins and cells and tissues and organs and everything else… It was beautiful to her.

She was beginning to realize that Aldous Leekie would never feel the same, and she decided to keep the secrets in her heart for now, for she had nowhere else to put them.

So when he asked her later that evening to describe her subject, Delphine simply said, “She’s like a twig.”

“Well, I was expecting a lengthier report,” he chuckled. “But at least those are easy to snap, eh?”

She mildly smiled as she showed him the technical findings, but in her mind, the twigs were becoming stronger. She would find a way to take care of it.


	4. A Discussion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cosima speaks.

DISCUSSION:

The following week, Cosima had returned to her speeches at the greenhouse. The following week, Delphine once again stood on the other side of the room, watching. But this time, they had walked up to each other afterwards.

“Hi!”

“Cosima,” she waved.

“How was it?” the girl grimaced, flying her hands to the receding tour group.

She hummed, “Well… it was…”

“I know. It was rusty.”  
“No…!” she chuckled.  
“I haven’t done one in a while—”  
“C’est magnifique.”

Cosima shifted her eyes up and snorted a grin. “Really? Don’t shit me, Delphine.”

“No, no! Um… If it helps, I’ve watched your tour speeches here, for a while now. And they’ve always been very good,” she fumbled.

The girl smiled silently and stuffed her hands in red pockets.

Delphine wondered if she had said anything wrong. She quickly raised her right hand and added, “No shitting.”

A laugh. “So… You ready to help set up the new arrangements for Horticulture Night?”

She smiled back. “Let’s go.”

Madame Lentille was out and about supervising her beloved botanicals, leaving Delphine, once again, on the other side of the room from Cosima where she had been assigned. As much as the greenery energized her, conversing with Cosima was becoming more her favorite brand of coffee that she seemed weighted by something other than the pots she had been rearranging.

“Feeling rooted?”

She whirled around, grinning to see dreadlocks. “You’re supposed to be with the evergreens!” she whispered, secretly hoping Cosima wouldn’t listen.

“I prefer deciduous,” she quipped. “Speaking of which… I have something to show you. C’mon!”

“Cosima,” she laughed, her eyes scouting for the professor. She followed her anyway, the sound of the girl’s name becoming more and more comfortable in her mouth.

…

“You’re a troublemaker, you know?” she hissed down the corridor.

A smile. “Hah. Trust me,  _I’m_  not ‘the troublemaker’. Besides, you’re gonna love this.”

She shook her head. “What about the professor?”

The girl with the glasses paused outside the perennial exhibit and looked at her, a sly lift of the corner of her lip. “You mean Professor Sprout?”

She tilted her head and furrowed her brows. Cosima smirked.

She tapped her forehead and groaned, “Ohhh. Harry—”  
“Yeah.”  
“Harry Potter!”  
Cosima laughed. “Yes. I was worried you didn’t know how to read.”

“You are terrible!” she chided as she playfully slapped the small shoulder. “How do you say, uh… mécréant?”  
“Meh-cray-wha… miscreant?”  
“Yes!”  
“You’re calling me a miscreant?”  
“Yes.”  
“Seriously? You’re calling me a jerk?”  
“Is that how you say it?”  
“Yes.”  
“You’re a jerk.”

They had finally stopped in front of a display of purple-blue flowers, the petals forming a thin, long hollow tube.

“Oh, these  _are_ …” she nodded her head, “These are lovely, Cosima.”

“They’re Delphiniums.”

She turned to face her guide, her mouth slightly gaping in wonder. Cosima beamed.

“Well, larkspurs, because of that tube at the end of their petals. They’re, um, the birth flower for July. We usually have each month’s flower displayed somewhere and… I thought I’d show you before they happen to get moved out with all of the arranging today.”

The girl had been looking at the flowers like they were the best thing in the whole world. Somehow, in the recesses of her consciousness, Delphine had begun to wish that Cosima would look at her like she did those flowers.

“I didn’t know there were flowers that had my name,” she gushed, stroking a petal. “…Merci beaucoup.”

The girl nodded and looked down. Gently quiet. A side that Delphine had not yet seen and that Cosima was now showing to her.

“Why do you prefer deciduous plants?” she continued in an effort to coax the hazel eyes to meet hers.

They did. And even without an explanation, Delphine understood why falling leaves were beautiful because she saw them in the girl’s eyes. The swirling hues of yellow and orange, and the reddish tinge of brown meeting gold - that autumn was the greatest season of them all because of the colors.

“Well… like this larkspur for example. It’s a perennial so… they live for more than two years, longer than the others. But every fall they lose their leaves - everything. And when you think they’ve just about given up, they come back to flower every spring and summer. And they become most beautiful right before they die in autumn, like they’ve been saving the best for last.”

Delphine chuckled. “So you’re saying green is boring?”

“Evergreens? Totally. They don’t know what it means to die, so they take their green leaves for granted and never learn to become any other color.”

Did they see the same colors?

“To never be able to change. It’s like they’re chained,” she murmured.

“Yeah. Sad.”  
“You think so?”

“Being able to change and be different is beautiful, Delphine. Otherwise, it’s like you’re just a… replica of something, and never really be alive.”

 _Replica_. Was she talking about clones?

Did Cosima  _know_?

…

She excused herself politely and went back to sit amongst a shroud of potted peas that she had been tasked to move, wiping the perspiration off her hands. Conflicts reeled in her head.

What to tell Leekie. Would it endanger Cosima?

Maybe she should just ask to be taken off of the project. But her mother…

Was this the only way? What would Cosima think of her if she found out? She was already so fond of the younger girl, she didn’t want to lose her friendship. But did Cosima even consider her a friend, or just a stalker at the greenhouse?

She finally came to the conclusion that any way she looked at it, she had messed up. She just wanted to make friends. It shouldn’t have to be this difficult.

And why did it have to be Cosima? No one told her her subject would be  _that_  charming. No one told her it would be her subject who would still her heart and make her realize that for the longest time she had been clinging her own roots to polluted ground, feeding herself with the poison of everything she hated. That her leaves had dulled in self-decay with believing that they were dead and ugly and could never be loved, and that it was all just a science experiment anyway.

But it wasn’t just that, was it?

Because Cosima wasn’t just a replica of a few. She was someone. Someone’s someone.

 _One_.

Delphine stood. She had to check in with Leekie in a bit, but she wanted to let Cosima know one thing first.

…

She found her back at the evergreens along with a concerned smile.

“Hey. I thought I scared you away.”

She chuckled. “No, no. I was just— worried Professor would catch us out of post—”

The girl’s smile widened. “It wasn’t because I was being too deep?”  
“Haha, no. I like deep— uh— I get you.”

They fumbled in small laughs before she was able to compose herself.

“Cosima.”  
“Yeah?”  
“Can we be friends?”

Hazel eyes met hers through the looking glass of her own. The girl stilled, then, “Yeah. Why not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry if the French is wrong. Also the plants.)


	5. Lines

She strolled through the campus knoll afterwards, a smile on her face.

Kicking the leaves with her boots, watching them fly, she remembered things her mother once told her.

That the lines in our hands are full of stories. They told stories of that hand’s movements; like how they fly through air, how they held on to things that were dear to them, how they wrote with pens to share their stories with others. And how her mother loved all of the lines of her father’s hands.

She remembered glimpses of her mother watching her father as he strummed his violin, his fingers a dancing balancing act on the quadruple tight-rope. The flurry of creases that hurriedly prepared coffee in the morning as an apology for having to leave for business again. How the creases relaxed and stilled for a moment so that the prints were so clear as to prove his identity when her mother would hold his hand, that this was the real him. That she made him real.

And the final grip, in the afternoon light that filtered through the hospital window, that let them know they were the things he’d hold onto most, before finally releasing them because it was not yet their time. That they still had stories to tell of their own hands.

And how Delphine had cried because she had finally realized why her father didn’t hold her hand that day at the market. She had gotten lost among the stalls and after trying to retrace her steps, she had seen his hand and grabbed it in relief. When she looked up she saw his smile, but he didn’t hold her hand, and she wondered if he was not happy to have her back. He let her walk in front and placed his hand on her shoulder instead. He had taught her to take the lead; to find her way, to be free from a sort of chain - but that his hand was still there to guide her and near to catch her if she fell.

That to love is not to grip forever, but to hold, and to let yourself fall at times. To let free.

So she cried. Because she’d never be able to thank him for that. But her mother sat her down and held her hands, and even though hers were full of fractured ridges, she showed Delphine the constellations in the child’s own lines. It was the light that had pasted the cracks together again. And that even if she had been broken, she was still standing.

That to love is to find the broken things still beautiful, because it’s easy to like what’s already whole. It takes a lot more to love something that’s already broken. And when she thought about these things, she thought about how Cosima Niehaus had showed her the Delphiniums and had begun to cultivate a garden in her mind.

…

So she stayed to figure out another way. Perhaps a different way to tell the story.

“Invite her to my lecture.”

“Quoi?” she looked up from her report.

He uncrossed his arms and rose from the sofa, heading towards the whiskey table. “I would like to see her for myself,” he continued, pouring a glass.

She rustled her head. “I thought our… subjects… aren’t supposed to know about us. About themselves.”

He took the shot and minced his mouth. “Well, you said she might already know about herself.”

“I wasn’t sure—”

“And that’s why I’d like to meet her.” He placed the glass with a loud clink and faced her. “In the meantime, I want you to find out if she knows anything else. She  _is_ , also, a scientist. She might be curious.”

She bit her lip. “What would happen if she knows? Wouldn’t that create bias - a Hawthorne effect?”

“Yes.” He looked down and closed her report. “We’d have to do something about that.”

He lifted his eyes at her, and for the first time she began to see the stranger within. “Do it discreetly.”

She would have run were it not for the stir in her head that told her she was being watched as well. She  _knew_  these things -  _she was a scientist for God’s sake_ \- but why was it only now that she had finally realized she had also been blind? It was an experiment after all and she was a participant, and she knew that double-blind studies decreased bias of the outcomes, increasing the strength of the conclusions.

Maybe it was her last shard of hope that Aldous, her friend, still existed. But now she knew that he had not been telling her everything. And the worst part was that she could do nothing about it as of that moment. If they knew she wasn’t blinded anymore, they would take her out of the experiment. With the implications of a decades-long study encompassing boundaries that she couldn’t even fathom, she knew that a simple reprimand would not do. There would be harm involved in such darkness.

And that’s why they had taken in her mother.

No. She knew she had to lay low for now. Play their game. Until she could find a way to save her mother, Cosima, and perhaps even herself.

…

It was the day of the lecture and she had not yet seen Cosima. Part of it was her own reluctance to let the girl near Leekie. Part of it was that Cosima was quite the elusive girl - or can she say reclusive? She had missed her last class, and when Delphine checked at the greenhouse, the attendant mentioned her usually being locked up in her room doing research.

She looked down at her phone and opened her contacts. They had exchanged numbers after that day at the greenhouse, but she never had the courage to message her, let alone call. She reasoned that she didn’t have a need to since she knew the girl’s schedule anyway, but really, it was because she didn’t want to come off as a creep. She already had to figure out not looking like one with her duties, and she didn’t know what Cosima had thought of her silent watching of her tour speeches.

Her list scrolled down past first initials attached to last names until it arrived at  _Cosima_. No ‘Niehaus’, no initials; it stood out like the shiny ‘start’ button to an unknown adventure.

She stared at it until she realized her breath had become labored. She inhaled deeply to change the tempo and flicked her finger across the screen, the letters flying up until she reached  _Maman_  - the only other name listed without initials. A swelling began in her chest and she noticed her vision blurring. She hurriedly tapped the screen and pressed the phone against her ear.

After the same calculated number of rings, it went to voicemail. She sometimes carried a hope that perhaps her mother would have decided to record a message, but it was automated once again.

She hadn’t heard her mother’s voice since she’d left France.

She missed it, along with many things. Maman’s voice was warm like hot chocolate before bedtime. Now the only thing she had against the cold of Minnesota’s deepening autumn was her own black coat.

Was the cold the reason why she was being drawn to the girl with the red coat?

She laughed to herself.

 _At_  herself.

For being silly, she figured. She was standing outside amidst the leaves, winds nipping at her fingers. She noticed the dry cracks in her skin from forgetting her gloves, the lines running like boundaries that divided the countries on a map, making her even more aware that she had never been in one piece. Maybe her own body had always been at war with itself, like self-made antibodies attacking her own cells.

She needed a truce. So she compromised and scrolled back up to the start.

…

Delphine didn’t call, but she’d left a text message.

The first stop on the map was aptly named:  _Library_.

She found herself walking the shelves full of words; the words and solutions that she had not found yet. The words she was not yet able to say to her colleague or to her new friend were out there somewhere.

She had not replied to say if she was going to be there, Cosima had just suggested it. And it was out of her own train to thought to believe that if the girl did actually know Delphine’s true purpose, as she and Leekie had supposed, that she would put herself out there any further.

But just as she had looked down at her phone to tell Leekie that it would be another “no show”, she heard the familiar voice once again, and as she looked up, dreadlocks.

An immediate frown etched onto her face as she realized someone else had had the courage of calling Cosima that she did not yet possess. Something tugged at her to follow the voice out the aisle. She foolishly smiled. The girl was still on the phone.

But of course, such an animated person  _would_  have other friends. Why was she getting jealous? She shook her head and glanced once more to the safety of her phone as she pretended to be occupied, pulling up a chair and opening her books. But her ears were focused on only one sound.

After several minutes of staring at old notes that she had memorized a hundred times before, she began to realize how ridiculous it was to be sitting there highlighting crap that wasn’t doing anyone any good and her want to tell Cosima the truth. But she would have to do it as gently as possible if she wanted any chance to salvage this newfound friendship. Cosima first needed to be introduced to what was happening. Then Delphine could figure out how to tell her depending on her reaction.

Maybe introducing her to Leekie  _would_  be helpful in that sense.

She smiled, because for the first time, she had the beginnings of a plan.

And perhaps the stars were beginning to align that day because even without her own intention, Cosima had coincidentally arrived next to her at the exact moment the idea offered itself.

And when Cosima said her name, it was music. And not the music that you hear, but the music that you saw. It was staff lines from the sheet music composed specifically for her, reaching out, turning into Adagio.

Such music that her voice emerged like a song. “Bonjour, Cosima.”

“I’m bored,” Cosima said softly with a smirk and a chuckle.

Delphine’s breath caught as she turned back to her notes, unsure of how to speak of everything that held a double-edged blade with a straight face. She rambled on anyway, almost breaking at Cosima’s knowledge of Neolutionism.

“You- you’ve heard of it?” she stuttered, a strain in the music.

“Yeah, it’s… it’s kinda fringe, don’t you think?” the girl answered, hazel eyes squinting slightly, though they stayed on hers.

Delphine blinked rapidly and looked down as her mouth searched for words. Cosima’s hand was leaning against the table next to her arms.

She had only caught a glimpse of them as she continued their conversation, her eyes grazing over the rest of the girl in red as her consciousness focused on speaking, her subconscious taking over everything else. She couldn’t control the flood that started in her chest and spread out to her limbs, almost pouring out of her, urging her to plant her own fingers on the table.

And when the girl moved to leave and Delphine caught the smile on her face as she turned to go, it left her in a state of confused adoration for the symphony between them.

But two things she was sure of.

When she asked  _if you want to come with me_ , Cosima said, “Sure.”

And when Cosima turned around to leave, picking her hand up from where she had planted it an inch from Delphine’s arm, Delphine knew it was an inch too far.

Her hands had finally realized the story they wanted to tell.


	6. Wine

He told her, "You need to get her closer."

The question in her head was... to  _who_?

To Dyad?

To  _her_?

The last thought made her smile, though she wasn’t entirely sure why.

She had already invited the PhD student, and something made her confident that the girl would be at the lecture.

She liked to think it was because, somehow, Cosima - even if she  _knew_  - was interested in the goings on at Dyad; that the girl liked dancing on the edge of curiosity and danger.

A tiny part whispered that it was really because of her, but Delphine wasn't used to any good thing happening in a long time so she pushed those notions aside. 

Furthermore, she liked to think of the  _brave and curious Cosima_  - because it moved her to be the same.

In fact, she realized her thoughts had come to consist so much of Cosima lately that she could almost visualize the girl; in her carmine dress earlier that day that had hugged her curves more than Delphine had ever noticed before, and her hands..

It was almost as if she willed her into life, looking up to catch her new favorite locks of hair appearing in the crowd at the lecture hall.

"Cosima!" she called out hurriedly - a little too loud - her eyes flickering.

Trying to contain her excited outburst, she hushed a soft “hey”, but before she knew it, Cosima’s hand was in hers - her own hand reaching out to grasp something that had always been out of reach, like the distant sky. And in that split second, when her mind registered the feel of soft skin against her own, Delphine wondered if this was what she had been looking for all her life, just as it took 1 million years for the first humans to discover fire.

And it was the first time she ever felt a burn quite like this, spreading its light over her skin and right down to the marrow of her bones that her blood became drunk with the sunrise; and in that second her heart awoke, leaving her head to ponder why the last word of her greeting was ‘disappointed’ as they stood there in silence, staring at each other in a sort of luminescence. They had never been closer. Delphine did not want to let go of her hand.

So she didn’t.

She remembered the day her mother had showed her the cracks in her creases and the day her father taught her that she couldn’t hold on forever. She knew these things in her head, but this was the first time she ever truly felt them.

And when she lightly began to map out the lines of the girl’s palm with her fingertips as she led them to the chairs, she felt like that little girl in the woods of Versailles again; lost, and with dirt on her hands that she feared smudging the perfect creases of the girl’s pages. But Cosima didn’t let go either.

And it made her tremble, and it made her shake. Like atomic earthquakes in her palm.

That when they finally separated to sit, the aftershocks lingered like words of affection waiting to break free from her tongue.

It was an excitement that was new to her, and she spent the entire lecture trying to put a finger on it, stealing glances at the girl and wondering why her pulse overtook the clarity of her thoughts with each shared look.

She questioned why, when Leekie spoke, she was no longer moved by his intellectual charms, putting on a fake smile for show. She instead wondered about how the reasoning behind Neolution’s innovation - because “we’re all just fundamentally flawed” - could actually be true, when the result of this “experiment” sitting next to her was nothing short of perfection, her own flaws as visible as the dirt on her hands.

And she became frightened and thrilled all at once. All because of what may be true.

_Self-directed evolution_.

What if both her and Cosima had both been directed to be there, at that moment, with those thoughts, with those feelings, exactly as the science predicted?

How much could she really be in control of her situation when she couldn’t even understand why her eyes inadvertently fell to the girl’s lips when she smirked and joked about “basic lasik”, wondering where the boundaries of Platonicism fell between her lips and Cosima’s?

And if it was a  _right_ , did she even want it?

She chuckled and she smiled in conversation once the lecture had finished, nodding to Leekie by instinct as he glanced over at Cosima, but her stomach whirled and her head knew that her outsides were fighting with her heart.

She thought she’d had it figured out; this new plan, a way to break free from her chains. But it seemed as if every time she came closer to understanding the secrets of this experiment, the more she fell into the cloud of self-doubt that poured her back into the ground saying,  _this is how you evolved, now direct yourself_  - when, really, she had been placed there out of her own accord.

She wondered if this was Frankenstein, and if she was the monster that had been created in the quest for human perfection. Except that she had never been the intended product.

She wondered, if, because of all of this, these feelings that Cosima Niehaus were beginning to inspire in her were even real at all.

She wanted to hold Cosima’s hands, but she didn’t want to lie. So she turned to the glass in her hand and began to drink until she could find another escape.

“Non, non, its… Neolution is… is not eugenical,” she sputtered.  
“Okay, so what is it? Is it Utopian?” Cosima pressed.

Delphine sighed through her teeth, buffering the girl’s speculations on the nonpareil. She spotted Leekie in the crowd and changed direction. She needed her focus back.

Come to think of it, the story of Frankenstein never did end well. But as she walked to the face of Neolution, sipping her wine, she remembered that wine came from grapes and vineyards; vineyards often being characterized by their  _terroir_ , the local environment’s effects on the production of the final product.

_Nature vs. Nurture_.

She thought of the woods, and she began to smile.

She  _can_  change.

Her mental shears were at the ready. She would make it beautiful.

“You brought her. Good,” he murmured, pretending to look nonchalant.  
“Yes,” she replied, scanning his face for a twitch that might give away more than what was being said.  
“Has she told you anything, brought up any ideas? Questions?”  
“Non. But she’s heard of Neolution.”

This much was true, but Delphine was set to find out on her own. She swallowed the alcohol and flared her eyes up. “Do you want to meet her now?”

“Hm,” he nodded.

She glanced back to meet Cosima’s eyes, in careful scrutiny of their conversation and, yet, something else. A tinge of sadness, it seemed. A hesitation.

Delphine ushered her forward with a light shrug of her arm, confused at the girl’s sudden timidness. Had she been wrong about Cosima’s interest in Dyad? Or was it the same timidness she herself exhibited when she used to watch the girl’s speeches from behind the greenhouse displays?

She determined to work these things out later, but for now, she’d play her part. This time though, it was for her plan - not Dyad’s.

It began with a greeting in french. She looked at Cosima who simply shook her head and turned back to Leekie.

“I have a… neurolingual chip,” he offered, raising his eyebrows.

Cosima cocked her head.

“Bullshit.”

And that’s when Delphine knew.

It took a second to register the girl’s impertinence, but when it did - when she realized Cosima had been waiting patiently and quietly for a catch in the open field, like the sleekest jaguar - she almost couldn’t hold back the laugh.

And what Delphine knew was this: that Cosima Niehaus was showing her a way out with her defiance and skepticism, disguising it in the veil of cheekiness. A way out of the cloud of self-doubt.

Her words sprouted naturally, her roots beginning to break free. “At the Dyad Institute,” she furthered.

“You’ve heard of us,” he responded, playing back. She wanted to see if he would give away his intentions.

Cosima joined in on the interrogation, as if their minds had become fastened with one look. “Are they from the… the Dyad Institute?”

“Ah, my Freaky Leekies…”

Delphine began to wonder if Dyad obsessed over their creations so much that they would be brash enough to study them up-close themselves. Would they give in to the temptation of having a clone see them from within?

“You know, I’m in Immunology,” she manipulated.

Leekie kept a steady stare at Cosima. “And you?”

“Um. Evo Devo,” the girl quipped, once more with the tilt of the head. A predator at play. And what she said gave Delphine a new hope.

_So whenever somebody talks about the future, I always say ‘show, don’t tell’._

It was the flicker of hope that, after everything had revealed itself, Cosima might one day be able to forgive her. Because Leekie had invited them in, it was what she had figured all along. The question now was  _why?_

The grin on the girl’s face made her want to try. She smiled and called the student out on her brazenness, smirking as dreadlocks bounded behind her.

“You are such a brat!”

Cosima chuckled and grabbed two wine bottles from the serving table. It was then that Delphine discovered Cosima’s partiality to wine, and cemented in her the girl’s penchant for surprising her with mischief and making her smile.

She couldn’t say no, as her hands rose up to accept the stolen product of  _terroir_ , almost as a flip off to the chains of directed evolution and into a coming about of the self.

And as she ran, she pretended she was flying away from the ground, up against the dark tunnels of gravity, and out into space. To freedom.

That when they had ran across the tunnel in laughter, Delphine noticed their joined hands - as if chains, but that these were different.

That when she asked, “Did we lose them?” she already knew the answer, the lovely voice beside her proclaiming an enthusiastic “yes!”

Cosima’s hands were the propulsion of flight. They were setting her free to dance in the stratosphere and up into the light of realization in the beyond, as if together they had discovered a new planet in which all its inhabitants had wings.

It made her incredibly happy that she had to pause and catch her breath… was it because of  _her_?

“Okay, so let’s, uh, steal some bikes!” the girl in red announced.

She looked away to hide the smiles that wanted to burst through her lips. “Oh, no no no, that’s too much crime for me.”

She felt like the happiest girl in the whole country at that moment, and it was a feeling she wanted to understand. She gazed back to her little wonder and hummed, “I have a class to take…”

The late afternoon light gleamed their way like Versailles, the light in the girl’s eyes looked like home.

Delphine swallowed a breath and said, “You know what’s a very french thing to do?”

“What?”

She gushed, “After a jogging like this, we like to smoke a nice little cigarette.” She looked at Cosima and a feeling in her stomach began to swell with a desire to show her things - things that were a part of her.  _Home_.

“Did you say, ‘a jogging’?”

She smiled affectedly. Did Cosima Niehaus make her that happy? That skip-through-the-woods, erupt into song with birds on her shoulders happy? She nodded. “Yes.”

“You did. Okay, just checking.” The girl had such a beautiful laugh. Delphine began to think that she wouldn’t mind sharing cigarettes and laughter with her every day.

“Do you smoke? Do you want one?” she breathed.

And when Cosima talked about getting baked, she promised “one day”.

“Okay. One day,” she promised back.

And when the smoke cleared, the girl with the glasses was still there.

It could happen.

It  _was_ happening.

When she looked into the autumn eyes, she could see that something was changing between them. Something more than the boundaries of friendship they had fashioned amidst the perennial leaves. That it wasn’t just her.

She stared once more at the grin on the lips across from her. She had never felt this before.

She thought back to the mixture of excitement and fear that rushed through her as they sat beside each other in the lecture hall. Was this the reason?

Cosima was looking at her. But not like the Delphiniums.

She was looking at her like she had always done, and that’s when Delphine realized it.

That look was meant  _only_  for her.

“I have to go,” she whispered, the newfound feelings overwhelming her. She treaded forward, eyes closed, focusing on the scent in the girl’s skin as she controlled her affection on the corners of her lips.

For now.

Until she could sort out why, her entire walk to her apartment, the only thing she wanted to do was kiss Cosima Niehaus.


	7. Light

She sat in the afternoon light and wrote.

She tried once more, as she did every day, to call her mother, but ended up with the same conclusion.  _She's probably at dialysis or with the doctors_.

She would've worried more were it not for the letters she had received from Paris.

_Ma chère, I am still here._

_The treatments are going well._

_Do not worry about me._

_Worry about your medicine._

Her mother had always believed that what she was doing was for the greater good. And, even if she failed, the striving itself would prove a healing for her own soul.

Her heart would twitch at the thought of her mother ever finding out that it wasn't what she had envisioned. That both her brain and soul were disintegrating from all of it.

She realized that she shouldn't have gone so far down if she didn't know the way back out.

And so she wrote, because, for the first time in a long while, she had found the light. That her realizations could be turned around with just the smallest of things.

_It is the smallest things that save us_ , she wrote.

_Colors._  The flash of red at the greenhouse that made her stay. Eyes. Leaves. How sounds - how  _voices_  - could have shades, and how tones could flourish off the spectrum of light. The music of light. Of life.

_Lines_. Palms. Hands. Skin. How touches could heal. How boundaries and layers of clouds could be crossed by flight, by fire.

_A glass of wine_. Courage and self-discovery like cultured vines. The memory of good medicine. The taste of change. A conversation with  _her_. Of Utopia. Of a universe of their own, where they could fly, where stealing bikes and smoking pot were more than just casual mentions in the sunlight. Was this why she had the urge to kiss Cosima?

_Twigs_.

She harked back to the demonstrations of Madame Lentille.

The twigs were not yet fashioned.

She needed to do more research, dig deeper. She now knew that escape was possible, she could feel it in her bones, at the edges of her lips. But she did not yet know  _how_.

She needed to make the next meetings with Leekie count. She needed to tell Cosima the contents of those dusty vessels.

That without the innovation of the organization she had been tied to, Cosima Niehaus would not have been anything but cells spinning aimlessly in a mixture.

But Delphine knew better.

Deep in her heart, she was beginning to feel that it was the other way around. That without Cosima, it was her who would have just been another fallen leaf. That her own blood was made up of water and dust.  _Nothing._

She thought about her like light dissolving through the curtains. Dancing sprites. Levitating spirits.

One could see them, but one must choose to open the curtains first for it to dissolve through skin, to heart.

And as she gazed at afternoon's ballet in the air before her, she watched the light make love to the shade. She ran her arm under the brilliant stream. She thought of soft hands that burned her fault lines together.

...

"Your reports have been somewhat.. inconclusive lately," he gestured from across the restaurant table, sliding back the folder towards her, his expression sour from the events of the previous night.

She had arrived at his hotel, a mindless habit she had accustomed herself to ever since she felt the chill of loneliness. He had probably accustomed himself to it as well. There was no love.

Come to think of it, there was never more than friendship and admiration, twisted into a side-serving of makeshift physical intimacy to sweeten the mess they had gotten themselves into.

And she never fought it before because she had been afraid for herself, for her mother, when the fine print came into view.

But she no longer wanted to wallow in the mud of self-pity, and last night she strutted in with a purpose, dressed to the nines. She thought of the sleek jaguar, the secret agent of the forest. She fathomed herself into her own hero.

And he was pleasantly surprised, she was sure of it. He caressed her neck. She contemplated kicking her stilettos into his crotch.

But that wouldn't have been the best strategy.

No, she needed to extricate the information gently. The attack would come later. A true dessert.

It was unfortunate that he did not want to talk that night, however. So she left him in his bathrobe and threw out the sparkling dress. She had laughed afterwards.

_Of course_.

Predators lying in wait shouldn't be so easily spotted, glistening, through the brush.

She shook her head, a vision of night on the other side of the table. "I'm sorry, she has been missing class. I haven't observed her as much."

"She's up to something," he announced, stroking his chin. He raised his brows as a small grin formed on his mouth. "She's smart, that one."

She tilted her head. "It seems like you're proud of her."

He gave a low chuckle and slowly faced her. "Wouldn't you be?"

She looked down at the folder. She didn't know the feeling, she had never been proud of anything her whole life. Least of her involvement in this experiment.

"You wrote it yourself; she is fully functional in all aspects of human existence, with possibly an even higher form of intelligence than most humans," he continued.

"She is not just an experiment!" she snapped.

No.

There was one thing Delphine Cormier was proud of.

"I know," he replied calmly. "She's a person."

"No. She is more human than either of us, Aldous, and you know it," she glared at him, beckoning her friend to come back.

The one thing she was proud of was realizing and admitting that she had been wrong the entire time. It was realizing where the light could not reach any longer. But could he?

It was the first step of caring.  _It's like the little twigs_.

He leaned forward and out of the sunset's glare. "Do not think, Delphine, that we do not care for them. We are doing this because we started something decades ago that maybe we shouldn't have. But now it's there, and we have to make sure they survive."

"What are you talking about? You are sending them watchers -  _monitors_  - without their knowing, like lab rats!" she fumed. "Blinding as if they could not read a consent form themselves. And you know why we blind?"

"To let them know immediately could possibly be even more detrimental to their health--"

"It's to create a perfect  _experiment_ , Aldous!"

He stood and reached for his scarf. "She is already perfect. You said this. But  _you_..."

He faced her. "You are just adequate. I am going to relieve you of your duties."

She gaped in derision. "I never said I wanted out."

_Not yet_.

He looked out the windows and took a breath. "Then you need to be more efficient." He turned back to her and continued, "It is their mental and physical health we are worried about. It has not proven stable for every clone. That is why."

A tempest whirled in her chest. "How come you never told me that?"

"Because we don't want to arrive at preemptive conclusions. You worry about your own subject until then. Bring her here for dinner tomorrow."

He gave her one last glance. "Be careful, Delphine."

...

_Be careful, Delphine_.

The words had struck like thunderstorms she kept secret in the far corners of her neuronal gardens.

She didn't listen the first time, and how badly she wished to take it back.

_Maman! My research proposal was taken up for funding by the Dyad Institute!_   
_That's lovely, ma chère. But what is the Dyad Institute?_   
_It is an up and coming research center that is willing to push the borders of science. They have many wealthy private investors, and they're doing so much on the frontier of stem cell research for cloning--_   
_Cloning? That sounds like a dangerous subject, ma chère._   
_Oui, Maman, but think of the progress in therapeutic cloning!_   
_Hmm. I see where your spirits come from, but be careful, Delphine._   
_Maman, I'm going to take it up whether you agree or not._

And so she went through with her experiments. Her progress welcomed her into the ranks of the Neolution movement. She met him.

He seemed so brilliant at first.

She blindly went along. She forgot the hands that held her as she walked through the woods in the 4 o'clock afternoon light.

If she had paid more attention, she wouldn't have signed her mother up. _Inquiries into therapeutic cloning._

And now, she couldn't reach her with her own hands. And now, she was left with nothing but her own soil.

Her phone blipped. A message notification.

_Cosima_.

She immediately rose from her thoughts, as if the blips themselves sang the heraldry of the opened windows she'd been looking for. She held her breath as she tapped the screen, nothing to be heard but the beating in her chest. She liked the sound of it. She never believed it would be so easy to create as receiving a text message.

_Cosima. 9:42pm. Hi! What are you doing tomorrow? :)_

_Message sent. 9:45pm. Bonjour :) i have class in the morning and research to work on_

She took a deep breath and wondered about what it would be like to have wine again with Cosima Niehaus. She climbed into her bed, laying the phone beside her, and stared at the screen. She wondered if she could keep her safe.

_Cosima. 9:47pm. Bummer._

She giggled. How could one silly word sound like the pages of her favorite book? She swallowed the buzz in her throat and typed.

_Message sent. 9:48pm. Don't be sad :)_

What was she thinking?

_Cosima. 9:50pm. I wanted to show you something!_

She smiled and thought of the perennials in the greenhouse.

_Message sent. 9:51pm. You always want to show me something :) why don't you?_

_Cosima. 9:53pm. You're busy. :P_

She ran a thumb by her lip and looked up at the ceiling.  _We'll have wine, and dinner. And he will have to be there. But I will keep you safe._

She rolled to her side and picked up the phone. She wanted to see her, but only if she could control herself to focus on the task at hand.

She tapped the reply button.

_Message sent. 10:00pm. Do you want to have dinner tomorrow?_

_Cosima. 10:08pm. I dunno..._

Delphine scrunched her forehead. She sat up and typed a response.

_Message sent. 10:09pm. What? I thought you wanted to show me something?_

She had been sure that Cosima would've said yes. How could this woman be observed to arrive at definitive conclusions when science couldn't even predict all of the possibilities being generated in her autonomously working head?

She felt herself on the brink of a realization that could not be wholly formulated as of that moment. Her phone blipped as she opened her journal to jot down a note. She then turned back to the lit up display.

_Cosima. 10:11pm. I'm just kidding. :P_

_Message sent. 10:12pm. Is that a yes to dinner?_

_Cosima. 10:12pm. Oui. :)_

A grin swept through her lips. She wondered if big jungle cats ever smiled. She wondered about the 45 degree angles of twig formations, and if they were grins. She thought of the cheshire cat grin in Alice's wonderland, and how she had to fall through a hole to find herself.

_Message sent. 10:15pm. See you tomorrow then :)_

The smile never left her face, even after she washed it in the bathroom. She crawled under the covers and began to think of the morning, and how Cosima sometimes formed her smiles slowly, but opened to reveal the full gleam of her teeth.

Maybe that was it. Maybe she just wanted to kiss her smile.

A blip.

_Cosima. 11:45pm. Goodnight, Delphine. :)_

Her breath hitched in her throat. She began to fear if it was more than Cosima's smile that she wanted to kiss.

_Message sent. 11:49pm. Fais de beaux rêves :*_

She stared up once more at the ceiling. What if it wasn't her that was falling, but her heart?

_Do you want to steal some bikes?_   
_And go where?_   
_To Jupiter._   
_Why Jupiter?_   
_Because it defined the constellations._   
_Why does that matter?_   
_So we can connect our own dots. So we can matter._   
_Like stories in the sky?_   
_Yes._

The morning light filtered freely through as she fluttered in her dreams. She was pedaling. Holding her hand was the girl whose whole countenance rivaled constellations.


	8. Painting

There was an excitement in the air. She could feel it, like being swept up in a whirlwind of leaves, funneling up, up and up, into the sky.

Then calm. Like the wind cradling the nape of her neck and sifting through her hair, as she floated along, drifting out into the horizon where the sun would greet her home.

Delphine wondered if this was the beginning of a descent into madness, like how she saw Van Gogh’s  _Wheat Field with Cypresses_. She’d seen it once, in London; a picturesque countryside, but with stormy clouds and flaming trees. It was a blur, yet with light. Like a dream.

She’d never seen the version in New York with the lines.

She wished she felt more real, though she didn’t know what was causing it - the anxiety of her predicament, or an  _escape_  from reality with the wonderful girl in her dreams?

She straightened down her coat and walked to the sculpture by the tunnel.

Looking through the darkness that ended in light, she wondered if she’d ever go through it again. Running. Or if she would remain the headless horseman, the one who’d lost her head trying to be cavalier; now haunting snow-laden fields, causing death in her search to just be whole again.

A monster. A beast, if you will.

_Do you want to steal some bikes?_   
_So we can matter?_

_So we can matter._

Even the beasts of the earth mattered.

It was time.

She brought up her phone and typed.

_Message sent. 4:05pm. Bonjour :) are you ready?_

A blip quickly followed.  _Meet me at my place?_  There was an address included.

She already knew it by heart, but seeing it being willingly given filled her with a mix of guilt and sparks in her stomach.

She wrapped her jacket tighter and walked in the other direction.

…

Drapes were opened from a 2nd floor window that overlooked the street. Delphine wondered if it was used as a vantage point. Or as a portal to wait and dream?

She bit her lip and walked up to the dormitory.

The light streamed the hallway. She could see the dancing dust as she climbed the stairs.

Then a pause in front a black mahogany door. She checked the message again and confirmed the room number. Her palms cried in anticipation.

 _Be careful, Delphine_.

But this time she heard her mother.  _Worry about your medicine._

And she remembered herself.

She ran a hand through her hair and configured her countenance. She knocked.

After a few seconds, she questioned if she had the right door, or if she had really knocked. But then she heard the footsteps.

The door opened and an involuntary smile swept her face.

"Hi!"  
"Hey.."

Cosima had brought her arm up in time with her breath. “Sorry, I…”

As if the girl’s clothes could not get any tighter than that fantastic carmine dress, Delphine caught her eyes glancing down the skinny black outfit. Cosima’s bosom carved distinct arches against her chest.

"Oh, I’m-" she blinked to the floor as she stepped in. "I’m early.."

The girl turned back, Delphine admiring her whole front as she sputtered, “No. No no no, I’m late.”

She smiled at the adorable manner of the American’s speech as she scampered off to finish changing. Though when Delphine thought about it, it was her who was  _kinda always sorry_.

She surveyed the room. The first thing that caught her eyes was the way the setting light welcomed itself through the drawn drapes. It lovingly touched the piles of books on the floor, stirred the lava lamp on the desk with all its knick-knacks - pens and highlighters, binders, notes…

It was a bit of a mess, she concluded, but she found it endearing because… She chuckled.  _Her brain’s too fast for the physical world to keep up_.

"You can, uh, sit down if you’d like!" the voice called out beyond the archway.

Delphine almost turned around, but caught herself. She reddened at the thought of the girl changing behind her. She wondered about the view down her chest.

She blinked as she continued to walk past the archway towards the mirror. “It’s okay, I’ll just— you have so many books..”

A laugh. “Yeah.”

She caught a glimpse of the roses in her cheeks in the mirror and took a breath. The only way to stop thinking about Cosima’s cleavage was to think about the other thing that was fascinating her at that moment - Cosima’s mind.

_Find out what she knows about herself._

She turned to the shelves of the bookcase. Books, figures, a little globe… and something that looked like the edge of a zipped folder.

"Hey."

She broke from her reflections and whirled around to see the girl in crimson. Covered.

"Bonjour.." she breathed, a smile flickering across her face, instinctively leaning in as Cosima wrapped an arm around her neck, a kiss placed on her cheek.

Delphine mused about ever being loved as more than a peck on the cheeks.

"Thank you.. for meeting me," she offered softly.

"No, thank you for waiting," the girl grinned, then chuckled. "Sorry my place isn’t very… clean."

It made her smile back. “It’s interesting.”

"Is it?"

A nod. “Oui.”

She wondered if Cosima could feel the weight in the air. There was a heavier silence than the last time they were in front of one another.

"So—"  
"The sunset’s—"

A round of soft giggles floated through the room.

"Sorry!" Cosima gushed. "You were saying?"

"Non, non," she shook her head. "You go."

There was that slow gleam of teeth again. Delphine felt like leaning forward right then and there.

Cosima stuffed her hands in her pockets and gazed around. “I was just gonna say that you can’t really see the sunset from here.”

She wondered if that was what the girl was looking for, the sunset - the fading that Delphine feared. Not the rising from the darkness, the touches on the books. It terrified her into thinking that no one would ever tell her about love again.

It would be better to keep it to herself than even have the chance to feel it.

So she didn’t lean in.

She breathed out the fill of her lungs and slid her hands into her own pockets.

She spoke with the smallest hint of sadness in her smile. “Do you want to go to the restaurant before it gets too dark? It has a view of the sunset through the window panes.”

…

They were able to get a table on the 2nd floor balcony overlooking the lower tables and the tall glass windows. It made Delphine feel as if she was displayed for all to see. It made her feel naked that she shrugged off her coat in such an awkward fashion.

"Are you okay?" Cosima laughed, helping her out of it.

She fluttered her eyes and gaped at the coat in surprise as she wrapped it over her chair. She felt cold. “Eh, oui - I’m fine.”

"Oh, wait—"  
"What is it?"

Cosima reached behind her and gently let out the curl of blonde hair that had trapped itself at the back of her blouse. It sent chills up her spine as she imagined the leaves. Cosima’s fingers were like air.

"There," the student smirked. "Now you’re perfect."

In an instant, she warmed like a hearth.

"Merci," she quipped, trying to inhale away the blush on her cheeks.

She was supposed to be the one in control. She  _had_  to stay in control.

 _Now you’re perfect_.

The phrase puzzled her so. She set her mind to contemplate it later.

"So… what would you like?" she composed.

"Uh," the girl shrugged. "Maybe some wine to start?"

"Okay." She smiled as she waved over a waiter, remembering the day they had stolen the vintage. She hoped it would be strong enough of a memory for her companion to remember as well, if ever things didn’t go according to plan.

Perhaps if she began to reveal the truth tonight..

…

There was a part of her that truly believed she was somewhere else where he, or Dyad, or the experiment didn’t exist. Cosima made her feel like a new universe.

It didn’t help that the wine sent whispers into her head of that pictured Utopia. She decided that it would never taste as good as it did when drinking it with Cosima Niehaus.

But he did arrive.

The instant she heard the hostess announce it, she immediately reverted to a form that tiptoed in the jungle. She noticed her guest had as well.

Maybe she knew they could not escape this. Not yet.

"Should we invite him?"

What a show.  _Have dinner with me_   _\- oops, I changed my mind._  She  _was_  the cold turkey asshole.

 _Play on, turkey, beast of the earth,_  she thought. It would all matter in the end. She hoped.

It was a good thing Cosima came ready to play.

The more Delphine thought about it; the younger scientist seemed  _always_  ready to play. To wait, and to prey. It was strange compared to the bubbly mess she had encountered earlier in the dormitory.

_Why is that?_

She grinned in scrutiny as she sipped from her glass, her mind rewinding to the events at the lecture and the stolen drinks.

 _Bullshit_.

Her subject was wise enough to call it - was she wise enough to have caught her monitor’s bullshit this entire time?

"Dr. Leekie, you’ve perfected a number of proprietary cloning techniques in.. bacteria, amphibians, insects - human skin grafts. And you’re patenting transgenic embryonic stem cells?" Cosima challenged.

The tone had turned to a game of Trouble with the die held in limbo. She remained silent as the Dyad leader shifted.

"Eh, we hope to once we get the necessary approvals, but that is not public knowledge—"

"Mm— yeah, I did some digging and I’m… just guessing," the student smirked, her eyes wide. Instigating.

Delphine chuckled nervously and tried an amendment: she told a truth.

_That is why I like her._

It saved the conversation for the moment as subject and researcher continued their banter, double blind from her own musings as a new realization dawned on her.

There was a high chance Cosima Niehaus knew about herself and had been studying her biology. Leekie wanted her in Dyad, though Delphine did not yet know for what purpose. Did Cosima want in on Dyad too?

And was it a study to fill her own thirst for awareness, or had it gone broader - a knowledge of others like herself, a secret defiance?

"I can tell you have a.. very unique perspective, Cosima."

Delphine’s eyes widened. She thought he was against such disclosure. She began to warm again, but not in comfort. A fire began to crackle.

She was confused.

And then came her subject’s careful statement. “Scientific American doesn’t put scientists on the cover.”

Cosima  _knew_.

Leekie softly replied, “Every rule needs to be broken.”

_Was this even still an experiment?_

Delphine needed the details and she needed it from both of them. Cosima was ready to pounce out into the field, Delphine needed more time.

"Shall we order?" she announced.

Cosima turned to her. “Y’know, I’m.. not really hungry. Uh, the wine was great! But, um.. if it’s cool I’ll go ahead?”

She blinked. “Oh, non, non—”

The girl laughed. “I, uh, got a lot of reading left to do. It’s okay. Thank you though! Here..”

She rummaged in her bag when Leekie waved his hand.

"Don’t worry about it, Cosima, it’s on me," he offered.

"Um, thanks," she grinned, before saying her farewell and rising off.

Delphine watched as the girl in the red coat made her way down the balcony.  _No._ She wasn’t supposed to accept the wine. It wasn’t a blood contract.

She looked to Leekie who had narrowed his eyes in deliberation. The fume swept her like a fugue. She stood and gathered her jacket.

"What are you doing?" he uttered.

A storm rose. She planted a breach of green paper on the table and glared at him. “What are  _you_  doing? I thought affording disclosure could be detrimental to their health.”

He remained silent under a facade of imposing brows.

"Until you tell me what is really going on, I won’t be reporting."

…

"Cosima!" she called out, shrugging on her jacket and shouldering her purse as a breeze showered her outside the restaurant entrance.

A whirlwind of a girl in the moonlight. It was dark, but her colors didn’t fade. Her eyebrows questioned, yet a tiny smile grew from the edge of her lips.

"What are you doing?" she breathed.

Then calm.

 _I will stay with you tonight_ , Delphine wanted to say.

She smiled at the notion and breathed.

"Are you still hungry?"

Cosima beamed at her and it was sunlight.

…

"I can’t believe you just left him there," the girl chuckled, looping lo mein around her chopsticks on the bay window ledge littered with napkins, takeout boxes, and duck sauce.

Delphine stifled a giggle as she finished chewing. “Dr. Leekie?”

"Yeah."

She shook her curls and answered, “Oh, he was there to meet with someone so I excused myself.”

"Mm," Cosima hummed, their gazes meeting in that same ballet from the day in the courtyard.

She forced herself to look away. Cosima - all of her - was becoming very distracting.

Unfortunately, when she looked away she saw the bed. The influx of imaginings flashed through her head like a mix tape. Cosima on the bed. Her mother holding her hand. Bracelets in the greenhouse air. The light in the woods. Cosima’s hand in hers. A pint of ice cream. Jupiter. Her on the bed  _with_  Cosima.  _Focus on your medicine, ma chère_. Cosima looking at her like she just did. Her eyes wandering down the girl’s length. Pecks on the edges of lips in the courtyard.  _Kissing_  Cosima’s lips—

She grunted in reproach and shifted back, her hands shuffling over her styrofoam in an attempt to close it.

"You’re done?" the girl glanced up at her.

She forced a smile. “Oui.”

A view out the window offered her a portal to the moon and the stars, but all she could think of was how difficult pedaling to Jupiter would be. She was naive to think she could just dream it and it would happen. She had forgotten about the many elements of the universe and its surprises, its detours.

She was surprised with the things she had come to feel for  _her subject_.

It was a new delight and it was crossing boundaries she never expected to even approach. But it was a delight nonetheless, and that is why she feared it. In the context of science and progress and business and power, to delight is to be weakened from the logical agenda. For her, it was the task at hand.

And so she sighed because her first promise was to keep Cosima  _safe._  She wouldn’t be able to manage it if she could not preserve her own self.

"Hey, Delphine."

She faced her smiling host, which effected the same in her expression.

"What is it?"

"Are you.. okay?"

A grin. “Oh, oui. I was just, ehm.. thinking about the offer Dr. Leekie made earlier.”

The girl snorted, “Yeah.. maybe someday I’ll know as much as his brilliant mind.”

Delphine chuckled and shook her head. “You are so cheeky, you know?”

"Yeah, well," Cosima laughed.

"I’m serious," she countered, trying to exude it from her face that rebelled with inflections of the girl’s charm.

A sigh. “I’ll, uh.. I’ll think about it. You want some wine?”

She raised her brows. “More?”

The girl laughed and stood. “Yeah, I always keep a stash.”

She shrugged, “Okay.”

Cosima had offered an invitation to stay just a little longer. Maybe she could coax some more information out of her. She traipsed towards the archway.

The tiny girl was ruminating over a Dyad card in her hand.

There was a twitch in Delphine’s heart like the day she first watched her subject working a microscope in the lab. She wanted to be her hero all over again.

She noted a glimmer under the eyeglasses. She wanted to reach out and cradle those cheeks, perhaps announce  _No, my darling, run and live as often as you can, but do not blur!_   _Remember the lines that make you._  If only she would believe these words herself.

But she remained within her logic.

Or so she thought.

"Don’t you think… it’s time we admit what this is really about?" the girl mumbled in front of her.

Was this Cosima finally calling her out on her bullshit?

The small frame stirred towards her; movements of delineated brush strokes, the trepidation of seedlings.

Cosima was a vision, enveloping her like the breeze, as she leaned in. Delphine felt the levitation in her stomach as a hand caressed her jawline, the mix tape blasting symphonies of Cosima’s face and hers intertwined, attached, lips hungry in the light of the woods, the twigs snapped—

She awakened to the girl’s tender lips on hers; she breathed her in, she  _wanted_  to kiss her, to keep flying.

 _Now you’re perfect_.

But she wasn’t. Not at all, and Cosima had forgotten her game of bullshit.

Delphine cradled those cheeks.  _No, my darling_ , before all lift could be taken away by her lies.

"Oh.. God, Delphine, uh— did I make a huge mistake?"

 _How did this happen?_ **_What_ ** _is happening?_

"I…" she scrambled. "I have to go.."

She needed to map things out before she lost her way again. And so she closed the mahogany door behind her and leaned against it with a sigh.

 _I’m kinda always sorry, Cosima_.  _Always._

She gathered herself and put on her jacket. She pulled out her lipstick and twisted it open. She stared at the mauve in her hands.

Her curls shook out the air as she sighed. She could still taste the red of wine on her lips. Cosima’s lips.

If Cosima had opened the door and went after her, Delphine would have broken. She would kiss her back to tell her  _your lips taste like the rest of my life_.

But the black door didn’t open. And so she painted a seal of mauve on her mouth.

She walked back into winter’s night.


End file.
